


Weak Points

by intaglionyx



Category: Final Fantasy X
Genre: Gen, Mentor/Protégé
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-11
Updated: 2013-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-19 04:19:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/879381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intaglionyx/pseuds/intaglionyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Auron teaches Tidus where to most effectively stick his blade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Weak Points

**Author's Note:**

  * For [storyless](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storyless/gifts).



> For the prompt:
> 
> "Teacher-student moment between Auron and Tidus. Bonus points for the role inversion." 
> 
> (Sorry I didn't get that role inversion for you, radish/storyless!)

Auron can tell after only a few minutes of practice that the boy will never fight the way his father did, hacking with brute strength and laying waste to everything around him with heavy blows that seemed to come a little too fast from a man of his size. But then, Auron reminds himself, there isn’t much difference between their heights. Most of the difference had to do with the way Auron carried himself. 

No, Tidus fights with twin emphases on speed and finesse. Auron can’t do much to help with the former, but he decides to try and cultivate the latter as they progress along the highroad. He tells the boy to pay close attention to the way he moves as he treats his blade like an arrow, with himself as the fletching, targeting weak point after weak point and laying fiends low with a minimum of movement. It’s only after the third or fourth time that he tells the boy to watch closely that Tidus raises his hand like a child might at school, back in the dream city.

“Not that this isn’t great to watch,” Tidus says, already conciliatory in his tone and in the way he holds his hands out in front of him, “but it’s kind of hard to…apply this to what I do? You have that person-sized thing, it looks like it’s made for cutting down trees, you know? I don’t have that kind of reach.”

The boy has a point, and Auron runs his fingers through his graying hair, trying to think of a solution. One only comes to him when he looks to the boy’s blade, borrowed from the ball-slinging boor whose name Auron prefers to forget for the sake of alliteration. 

Brotherhood is not so slim or small that Auron cannot adjust to it, and not much time passes before he is setting himself to another batch of fiends with Tidus watching from a safe distance as his own blade drives between the shoulder blades of wolves and up through the neck of dual horns that leave themselves open for a fatal second. Auron tries to slow his movements without making himself vulnerable, so the boy can see more than just a blur of translucent blade and spraying blood. It isn’t what he’s used to, but Tidus needs a teacher and there are no other options available to them.

After a few such demonstrations, he returns Tidus’s blade and retrieves his own. They move ahead of the others, just off the paved highroad itself, and catch the attention of a pack of wolves so that Tidus can put what he’s seen to work. Auron covers the boy, letting him cut and feint at his own beast without having to worry about attacks from the sides or behind. It’s hard to tell how much he’s learned, but the blow that fells the wolf is one that falls between its shoulder blades, forward and down into its heart. Tidus crows as the pyreflies erupt around him, and when he turns to look at Auron and boast, the smug triumph in his expression are so like his father’s that Auron can’t help but laugh with him.


End file.
